Re: Conlanging as a personal thing

Hoiman Millah sez:

>>  Is there some kind of mental block that makes one's own constructed
>>language harder to learn than a natural one?
>
>I don't know; I used to be able to write in Olaetian without looking too
>many words up. But my recent languages change so much that I can't remember
>much of anything without looking it up.
  Yes! The fact that constructed languages evolve exponentially faster than
natural ones has to contribute to that difficulty. Next year, "to be" will
still be the same in French. You can't always say that for a conlang!
  There's also what Sally said about there not being any native speakers
with whom to practice. Originally I said I had spent more time learning
Rhean than any natural language, but think: I've obviously had FAR more
conversations in Spanish and Japanese than I ever had in Rhean!

>I'm sure that's got something to do with it. I did mostly original writing
>in Olaetian, and not all translations. I did a few translations too; things
>like the Star-Spangled Banner and Namárië, as well as translations of texts
>I originally wrote in English, but some of the earliest samples are
>original writing in Olaetian -- not very good writing, but at least it was
>straight Olaetian without even an English translation.
  Do you find also that straight Olaetian material has more real "Olaetian-
isms" than the translations? I've only written a couple "original" pieces
(news articles, mostly, and some correspondence between characters in the
story), and I find I shed a lot of anglophone patterns that way.
Perhaps a goal should be to write a piece in one's conlang so well that it
is difficult to translate into one's native tongue.

M

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